David Gerard is ready for the AI revolution, except it won’t happen. (Photo: Pauline Martindale )

The spring series of the Edict kicks off properly with our first special guest and it’s David Gerard, co-editor of the newsletter Pivot to AI. So guess what we talk about.

Yes, in this episode we talk about artificial intelligence. Specifically, we test out Google’s NotebookLM podcast creator, we discuss why the much-promoted AI utopia won’t happen, we put the idea of a robot uprising into its cultural context, and much more.

This podcast is available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, JioSaavn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Speaker.

You can also listen to the podcast below, or subscribe to the generic podcast feed.

Episode Links

01. David Gerard's home page

I'm most active at the moment on my blockchain blog, and on Rocknerd, my music webzine.
02. Pivot to AI – It can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong

It can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong
03. LK-99 - Wikipedia

LK-99 (from the Lee-Kim 1999 research), also called PCPOSOS, is a gray–black, polycrystalline compound, identified as a copper-doped lead?oxyapatite. A team from Korea University led by Lee Sukbae (???) and Kim Ji-Hoon (???) began studying this material as a potential superconductor starting in 1999. ? In July 2023, they published preprints claiming that it acts as a room-temperature superconductor... By mid-August 2023, the consensus was that LK-99 is not a superconductor at room temperature, and is an insulator in pure form.
04. Dartmouth workshop - Wikipedia

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was a 1956 summer workshop widely considered to be the founding event of artificial intelligence as a field.
05. Peter Thiel - Wikipedia

Peter Andreas Thiel (/ti?l/; born 11 October 1967) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of July 2024, Thiel had an estimated net worth of US$11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
06. Pinky and the Brain - Wikipedia

Pinky and the Brain is an American animated sitcom created by Tom Ruegger for the Kids' WB programming block of The WB. Pinky and The Brain are genetically enhanced laboratory mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Pinky is good-natured but feeble-minded, while The Brain is highly intelligent, self-centered and scheming.
07. Sam Altman - Wikipedia

Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019 (he was briefly fired and reinstated in November 2023). He is also the chairman of clean energy companies Oklo Inc. and Helion Energy. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019.
08. Worldcoin Hit With Scam And Manipulation Allegations

[21 July 2024] Worldcoin (WLD) has come under heavy criticism following a recent development, which led to talks about potential price manipulation by the team. Prominent crypto on-chain sleuth ZachXBT also reacted to these price manipulation allegations, suggesting that the Worldcoin team may actually be guilty of them.
09. The Intelligence Age - Sam Altman

[23 September 2024] In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.
10. OpenAI CEO: “SuperIntelligence within 1000’s of Days” - YouTube

[24 September 2024] Breakdown of Sam Altman’s blog post from today, enjoy!
11. Sam Altman: The superintelligent AI is coming in just ‘a few thousand days’! Maybe. – Pivot to AI

OpenAI founder Sam Altman has written about our fabulous future... “A few thousand days” means at least several years. This is Sam telling his backers to expect nothing checkable any time soon.
12. In a new manifesto, OpenAI’s Sam Altman envisions an AI utopia – and reveals glaring blind spots

[26 September 2024] T latest proclamation from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, published on his personal website this week, seems remarkably hyperbolic. We are on the verge of “The Intelligence Age”, he declares, powered by a “superintelligence” that may just be a “few thousand days” away. The new era will bring “astounding triumphs”, including “fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics”.

The 9pm AI Just Doesn’t Work with David Gerard (#NotAllAI)